Curriculum Rationale & Schemes of Learning

Curriculum Overview

Our curriculum is at the heart of the children’s experience at The William Hogarth School. It is the substance and backbone of a William Hogarth School education, setting out:

What we plan to teach
What we intend the children to learn

The William Hogarth School curriculum is designed to bring our school vision and ethos to life by being well-rounded and inclusive, offering something for everyone. As curriculum architects, we have been ambitious in our intent to serve our whole school community, transforming lives and opening doors for all children, moving them beyond what is expected and helping them to discover what is truly possible. We know our learners better than anyone and are able to adjust and adapt our offer to help everyone experience success.

Our aim is for our curriculum to:

Equip children with the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to make learning their own and to see themselves as lifelong learners

Empower children to think for themselves, within a safe environment, so that they can find their own voice in the crowd.

All children at The William Hogarth School, enjoy the full National Curriculum.

We plan for progress in each subject, with progress maps showing the development of knowledge, understanding and skills. We also understand that a predictable part of learning is “forgetting” over time. To address this, we have identified the fundamental learning that children need to master during their time with us and, using research guidance, have embedded retrieval and low-stakes quizzing in our learning sequences to help children keep hold of these fundamentals. Our curriculum design means that teachers are able to take the children’s learning to considerable depth.

We treat fluency in Reading, Writing and Maths as critical building blocks to wider success. Securing functional skills in Early Years and Key Stage 1 helps us to unlock the door to broader opportunities in Key Stage 2 and we build on this by prioritising language play, storytime and mathematical reasoning. In this way, children experience delight and wonder in their learning.

With a highly mobile school cohort, we place great emphasis on vocabulary development within and alongside our curriculum. We know that tackling the vocabulary deficit is imperative if our children are to build a rich lexicon of words that will help them to organise their ideas, build connections and express themselves effectively.

The broader curriculum is built around individual subject disciplines. New learning is developed half-termly so that all children benefit from securing their knowledge, understanding and skills within each domain before moving on. For subjects with a large body of knowledge such as Science, History or Geography, children begin each half term with a ‘big question’ to explore. This anchors the learning, providing a clear focus and direction of travel; teachers segment the ‘big question’ into its core elements which children explore through the learning sequence. In this way, children are able to unify the learning and secure deeper understanding.

For some subjects such as Phonics, Maths and English, we have adopted published schemes with a strong evidence base unpinning them. These are the curriculum launchpad for learning, because they are well-sequenced, knowledge rich and sufficiently ambitious for our learners. Highly effective curriculum adaptation supports each child in embedding the knowledge and understanding needed to reach their potential, so that they can use and apply their learning in different contexts.

For other subjects, such as Cooking, Computing and Art, we have designed our own curriculum, drawing on the expertise of professional associations and using guidance to enhance our planning. These subjects are an essential ingredient of our inclusive curriculum, allowing children opportunities to transfer, embed and apply key knowledge, skills and understanding in meaningful contexts, as well as developing their language and fine motor skills.

Subjects, such as music, require particular expertise. As such, these are taught by specialists rather than class teachers. As an outward facing school, we are also keen to work with other specialists such as swimming or tennis coaches and Sports Impact who can add real value to our curriculum offer and the children’s learning experience.

Personal Development is carefully and explicitly planned for, with a progressive Learning 2 Lead curriculum model that is responsive and innovative. As a result, our learners benefit from a holistic learning experience of real quality. This approach widens horizons and offers a well-rounded educational experience that goes beyond what children might encounter day-to-day.